Think my laptop's not well...

therecklessone

Had some trouble recently with my Acer laptop, basically I was getting continuous BSODs after running the machine for 15min+, and having to reboot. I tried reinstalling the OS from the Recovery CDs but kept getting write errors half way through the process. I thought my HDD was fupped, so I took it out of its bay and put it back in which seemed to do the trick, as in I could reinstall the OS and haven't had any crashes since.

However, I've had IE freeze on me a couple of times the last few days (i usually use Firefox, but for one or two sites IE works better) and I've now noticed that in both IE and Firefox if I open a web page my CPU usage shoots up to 100% for a few seconds (never really bothered monitoring it before). Sorry if this seems like a stupid question, but is that normal?

I'm running Windows XP Pro SP2 on a Pentium M 1.3GHz, with 512MB DDR SDRAM. I've dumped Norton for AVG and Zone Alarm.

MunsterCycling

Yup 100% usage short term is normal but continual 100% isn't. As regards the BSODs, is the lappie running hot? My own Acer is like an oven but no BSODs. Dumping Norton is a smart move, maybe we will convince you to make a video of destroying the disk in a spectacular fashion??? (SouperComputer was offering €5 for such a piece of wanton destruction)

therecklessone

MunsterCycling wrote:

As regards the BSODs, is the lappie running hot? My own Acer is like an oven but no BSODs.

Yeah, hot hot hot after prolonged use. I'd noticed a buzzing noise in the right hand corner of the lappie shortly before things went pear-shaped, I'd put it down to a noisy fan but when the BSODs started I thought it could be worse. The error message on the BSOD mentioned possible hardware problems (for newly installed hardware, of which there was none) and coupled with the write error with the Recovery CD I guessed it was a HDD problem. Seems ok now apart from IE hanging, just thought the 100% usage was strange.

Thanks.

MunsterCycling wrote:

Dumping Norton is a smart move, maybe we will convince you to make a video of destroying the disk in a spectacular fashion??? (SouperComputer was offering €5 for such a piece of wanton destruction)

Only reason I'd kept it in the first place was the Anti-Spam feature in Outlook Express, but now I've installed Thunderbird with its Junk controls I'm laughing anyway.

schnupi

hmm well, that sounds quite strange alright. have u ever tried another antivirus program? i used to use norton and had huge problems with my system, slowness just being one. i switched to my anti virus prog and everything worked perfectly.. i switched to nod32 btw which i can recommend to everybody! ye that would be just a wild guess so dont blame me if it doesnt work

€: erm ye MunsterCycling already mentioned it..:rolleyes: nod32 has the same features as norton if not even more jus btw and runs on literally zero res. best prog i have used in my 6 yrs of pc experience

therecklessone

Just to clarify, I don't think Norton was the cause of the BSOD! Its bad, but not that bad...